Cully Hamner Signs DC Exclusive

By Matt Brady March 24, 2009 12:41pm ET

Cully Hamner Signs DC Exclusive

Black Lightning: Year One #6

As DC Comics’ June solicitations served as the de facto announcement, one of the new co-features coming in June will appear in Detective Comics beginning in June, and starring The Question. Written by Greg Rucka (who’s also writing the rest of Detective,
which stars Batwoman), The Question co-feature will be illustrated by
Cully Hamner, who’s also recently signed an exclusive contract with DC.

We spoke with Hamner about his upcoming Question as well as his new relationship with DC.

Newsarama: What led you here, Cully? Were you hinting around
that you'd be up for an exclusive to DC, or did the offer come out of
the blue?

Cully Hamner: Well, it’s a funny thing. I’ve doing comics
professionally now for about 18 years, and I’ve always been someone who
has played the entire field. I’ve worked for just about everybody, at
one time or another, and really enjoyed that. But I started at DC, and
I always seem to return to DC. So, in a way, it’s like home, I really
enjoy working with them, and I’ve had a lot of longstanding friendships
there. And for the last three years or so, they’ve kept me so busy that
even some people at DC thought I was already on an exclusive.

Anyway, Dan DiDio and Jann Jones were both always really great about
making sure I had a full plate, and they’ve both really championed me a
whole lot. Last summer at Heroes Con, we were talking about what I’d
like to be doing. It was a ton of stuff that we were throwing out
there, and I said that I’d been, in effect, exclusive since Blue Beetle and since it looked like I’d be doing the same for another couple of years, you know, how about we make it official?

Which, I think, sort of surprised Dan. I think there had been an
assumption for a while that I liked my freedom and didn’t want to tie
myself to one publisher. He was like, “Seriously?” I said, “Yeah.” So,
Dan just smiled and said, “Absolutely.” And that was that.

NRAMA: Is this your first time with an exclusive with a publisher?

CH: You know, I was actually under contract for a year to DC when I did Green Lantern: Mosiac
in ’92, but it wasn’t an exclusive. I could still work for anyone else,
as long as I gave priority to a certain amount of pages to DC. But this
is my first exclusive with anyone.

And like I said, I would regularly hear that people thought I was
exclusive anyway, and my thinking was that if I was going to be thought
to be so, I wouldn’t mind having the benefits of it being an official,
concrete situation, and continuing to work where I’m having such a good
time.

NRAMA: Not to be indelicate here, but what is this going to entail? I think, most recently, your work at DC has been Black Lightning, and then before that, Blue Beetle's
opening issues. Have you got an ongoing in the offing here, or will
this agreement see you bopping back and forth on a variety of projects?

CH: Well, now, just to be clear: In the last three or so years, I’ve penciled and inked six issues of Blue Beetle (and designed the character), six issues of Black Lightning: Year One, and three issues of Down
for Top Cow. I’ve also done fifteen or twenty covers, as well as
character designs for DC, Gametap, and a feature film, and even some
storyboards for another film. I’m well aware that I’ll never be what
anyone would call a fast artist, but I haven’t been asleep on the
couch, either.

But basically, I’ve gotten to a point in my life where there is a nice
sense of security in knowing that DC always has something for me to do,
and that I can stay in one place for a while—especially in the current
economic climate, right?

As to what I’ll be doing: There are a couple of things, but I don’t
think I’ll be doing a whole lot of jumping around. There is a pretty
cool project waiting in the wings that I’m not yet cleared to talk
about, mainly because it’s still being figured out. For the immediate
future, though, I’ll be in Detective Comics
every month, starting with issue #854. Greg Rucka and I are doing the
co-feature starring The Question, which has me smiling every day. I
mean, getting to work with someone of Greg’s caliber on a character as
rich as The Question is about as good a situation as I could ask for.
And on top of that, I was a huge fan of the run that Denny O’Neil and
Denys Cowan did with the Vic Sage version of the character in the 80’s,
as was Greg. So, we’re both excited about the character and, I think,
each other.

So, at least at first, I’ll be doing 8- and 10-pagers, with a high
possibility of longer stories later on. Michael Siglain, my editor, has
been pretty great about letting me play around with Renee Montoya’s
look a little. And I’ve got my studiomate, Laura Martin, on colors—she
did such an amazing job on my Black Lightning stuff that I almost
begged her to do it, and thankfully, she agreed. Really, I’m in the
winner’s circle here.

NRAMA: What led you to The Question and made you sign up for the gig when it was offered?

CH: Well, one of the most important things for me on every gig
is who I’m working with. I’d never worked with Greg before, but I love
reading him. I think he’s one of the best writers working in comics
today—especially crime stuff, which I’m a sucker for. Add to that the
fact, as I’ve said, I loved The Question during O’Neil and Cowan’s
zen-influenced take on the character. And I knew from talking to Greg
that he did, too, and I think the two of us quickly found that we were
fairly in harmony on the character. Mike Siglain was pushing the idea
of us teaming up on this pretty hard, too. And once I read the overview
and the first script, I just couldn’t turn it down.

That, and I believe that Greg and Jen Van Meter decided that I shouldn’t work with anyone outside their family.

NRAMA: And who can say no to “the family?” Had you been following what Greg was doing with Renee?

CH: I hadn’t, no, sorry to say. I got up to speed pretty quickly
once Mike suggested the project, and again, I was struck particularly
by the writing in Five Books of Blood. I wished that I had drawn it—and that’s a pretty good indicator of whether I’ll be happy on a project.

NRAMA: That said, what are your thoughts on the new version?

CH: Well… I’ll be honest here and say that I was attached to the
previous Question, Vic Sage (or Charlie Szasz, if you prefer). That was
what I knew, and being honest, I initially scoffed at the idea of The
Question being a mantle from one character to another. I also thought
that having anything other than a male in a suit, a trenchcoat, and a
fedora ruined the cool, graphic 60’s-Saul-Bass-ness look I always
wanted to try to pull off on this character. But again, it was the
writing that changed my mind. Greg has given her a great depth, and the
passage to her of Charlie’s “face” makes a lot of sense, as written.
I’m reluctant to go into a whole lot of detail, ‘cause I don’t want to
give away anything I shouldn’t. But she’s intense, passionate, and
motivated. And she has values, and it’s rare for that to be so apparent
in a modern comics character. In a way, I kind of think she’s Greg,
actually.

So, Renee won me over. My task beyond that was to make sure I could get
over my initial visual concerns and find a take that worked for me. I
took the weekend, read and re-read the material, and sketched. By that
Sunday, I had pretty well decided that not only could I make her look cool, but that I wanted
this gig. So, I wrote out an e-mail outlining what I thought my visual
approach should be, attached my sketches to illustrate the point a
little, and crossed my fingers that they’d like where I was going with
it. And here I am.

NRAMA: Finally Cully, you’re pretty much answers this through
your other answers, but one last time, more directly, why, at this
time, both for you as an artist, and for DC as a company, did you feel
comfortable making this jump?

CH: At the risk of indulging a cliché, it just felt like a good
time to settle down a little, you know? I like the people, I like the
characters, and I like knowing what I’m doing in the foreseeable
future. What a lot of people don’t know about this kind of
work—freelancing—is that a good chunk of it is about generating your
next gig. It takes effort and time to generate projects that will pay
and that are going to be interesting enough. And there is some
satisfaction for me that I’ve never been out of work for more than a
day or two in almost two decades. But it was time for a change of pace,
and I’m just happy to do it at DC, where I’ve spent so much of my
career. I’m looking forward to having a lot of fun.